How does Media Consumption affect Political Engagement? The Role of Newspaper and Social Media on Probability to Vote

CONTENTS:

ABSTRACT

1. INTRODUCTION

2. SUPPORTING THEORIES

2.1. NEWSPAPER READING: H1a

2.2. SOCIAL MEDIA: H2a

3. DATASET

4. CHOSEN VARIABLES

5. GATEWAY TO HYPOTHESES TESTING

6. DISCUSSION AND RESULTS

7. CONCLUSION

8. LITERATURE

9. DO-FILE

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the moderating effect of two independent variables of newspaper reading and social media on dependent variable of probability to vote. The data for this observational study was taken from pre-existing online access panel survey from the National Austrian Election Study (AUTNES). It has focused on Austrian National Parliamentary Election held on 15 October 2017, polling a sample of 4,480 respondents. To draw the hypotheses, two theoretical models were applied, having enabled me to improve the knowledge on the underlying research study. Findings show that voters with different frequency of exposure to newspaper behave to some extent differently while they come to voting. This very issue was not, however, valid for social media, although its correlation with probability to vote was statistically significant. The overall result shows that people with different levels of access to news on social media react almost similarly when they are asked whether they are going to participate in election.

Keywords: probability to vote, social media, newspaper, voting, correlation, quantitative analysis, voter survey